


i wish you could see, you through my eyes

by bucketofrice



Category: Figure Skating RPF, Olympics RPF
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Fluff and Angst, hopefully not too much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 19:26:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14385516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bucketofrice/pseuds/bucketofrice
Summary: "You've been searching, your whole life. For what’s been right in front of your eyes."orScott falls in love with Tessa, in five parts.





	i wish you could see, you through my eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Title and lyrics from "I'll Be Your Home" by Phillip LaRue.
> 
> Again, still can't believe I'm writing RPF for ice dancers, or really at all. Comments make my heart happy.

Scott Moir has loved Tessa Virtue since she was seven and he was nine and his aunt had had a fit of _wouldn’t they be cute together, let’s make them skate_. He’s loved her for twenty years, he’s as sure of it as he is of breathing.

It takes him a little longer to figure out he’s _in love_ with her. He falls in love with her bit by bit, until it hits him like a tidal wave.

 

**i. first skate**

There’s a reason they celebrate their skating anniversary in October. Sure, his aunt Carol paired them together that summer (he’s still convinced it was mainly for their families’ amusement, what, with all the not-so-subtle cooing and giggling they did from the other side of the boards) but it’s not until they enter their first competition together that it feels real.

Competition is a loose term. Really, it’s them skating a few laps around the rink, sometimes holding hands, and then, in a stiff dance hold. He spins her at the end, with her hand over her head, like he’d seen couples do at his aunt and uncle’s wedding. They finish at centre ice, and he grabs her clammy hand in his equally clammy one, and they take a shaky bow.

It’s over just as fast as it started, they collect their participation ribbons, Tessa gets a flower and their mums take them out for ice cream. He’s already thinking about hockey on the way to the parlour. Because that’s all this is really supposed to be, his mum told him when he started complaining: more practice so he can get better at hockey.

He likes skating with Tessa, really does, but he wants skates without toe picks and a hockey stick and his friends. And he knows she really loves ballet, and figures that means her being his partner is temporary, and he’s okay with that.

It’s not until later, when she comes to the rink and tells him she has an offer for the National Ballet school that he realizes how _much_ he likes skating with Tessa. How it feels nice to have a friend at every practice, to drive to competitions together, to surprise her with chocolate when things are hard. How it feels nice to hold a pretty girl’s hand, and dance on the ice, and feel like they’re flying.

So he tells her he’s so excited for her, even though he doesn’t want her to go at all. Plasters on a big smile, says “Tutu, I’m so proud of you!” even though his stomach feels like he’s gotten body-checked in hockey. 

“I told them no,” she says, a shy smile appearing on her lips and he’s stunned. “I told them I want to keep skating with you.” She blushes and looks down at the ice, scratches out a pattern with her toe pick. “I hope that’s okay, I know how much you love hockey…”

“Really?”

She nods, looks up at him through long lashes and he reaches out to take her hand. “I want to keep skating with you too.”

She grins at that and they take off onto the ice, skating along the edge. He stops her on the opposite side of the rink, because he’s just gained a forever partner and he’s feeling pretty bold for his age. He presses a tiny kiss to her cheek and watches her turn scarlet.

“What was that?”

“I figure since we’re going to hold hands a lot from now on, we might make it official, eh?”

She giggles, still blushing, but she nods and takes his hand again. They pick up speed as they skate around the corner, hands clasped together. They’re boyfriend and girlfriend now, he thinks, and he smiles.

He can’t play hockey with his girlfriend, but he can ice dance. To nine-year-old Scott, the decision is obvious.

 

**ii. first (makeshift) home**

Canton feels like it’s worlds away from home, not a three-hour car ride. Everything is new here, much more intense, high pressure, and … much more _Russian_. Even though they’re in America. It’s a fact that makes his sixteen-year-old self, fresh out of history lessons about the Cold War, laugh because the irony of it is striking.

What’s also striking is how high the stakes have suddenly become. How much Marina and Igor expect of him and Tessa, every day, around the clock. It’s what they signed up for, they both know it, but it’s a shock to the system in those first few months. It truly feels like it’s just them — Tessa and Scott from London — alone against the world.

Their new training partners are nice, Scott concedes, Ben even invited him to an impromptu game of hockey last week, but they don’t really fit in yet. Tessa is stuck with host parents until her mum comes down from London in a few months, and he knows she doesn’t really like them.

The only thing that’s better in Canton is the skating. Marina and Igor may be slightly cold and very Russian, but they know what they’re doing, and Scott and Tessa finally feel like they’re creating something out there on the ice. It’s magical, he thinks, connecting with the music and channeling all of his emotions into four and a half minutes.

He and Tessa are learning, constantly, pushing themselves harder than they’ve ever done before, and it’s rewarding to flop down on the benches after a long practice, pull off their skates and know they’ve accomplished something. He’ll nudge her shoulder on the bench then, give her a goofy grin and say “T, it’s just you and me, and we’re gonna be great out there.”

He picks her up at her host family’s house every morning, drives her to the rink (she’s too young for a license and besides, she wouldn’t be awake enough to stay on the road at that hour) and takes them to school after practice. Then to the rink again, while she does homework in his passenger seat. More hours on the ice, then the drive home.

More often than not, they stop by his place first, work on homework together, eat dinner or watch movies. He knows she doesn’t want to go home, so he makes sure he always has a place for her to be. Usually, that place is on his couch, curled up under his Leafs blanket, begging him to watch Pride and Prejudice. 

(He relents once, because Marina had told her she needed to be thinner that day. She doesn’t know he overheard the conversation. They watch the movie, she drinks two glasses of water and eats nothing. She cries at the ending. He pretends it was boring; in reality, he holds back a tear of his own.)

“I’m so glad I’m not a singles skater,” she says, two months after they move. They’re sitting at his kitchen table, she’s helping him with his math homework, he made her dinner. It’s a fair trade, mutually beneficial.

“Yeah?” he asks, while solving a logarithmic equation.

She taps her pencil on the paper where he’s made a mistake; he grabs his eraser. “I couldn’t do this without you, Scott. You’re my best friend; you’re the only person who makes Canton feel like home.”

“C’mere, kiddo.”

He smiles, drops his pencil and pulls her into an awkward hug across the expanse of his table. He vows in that moment that he will always be there for her, for his best friend, for his partner.

(He thinks back to this moment years later, when she has surgery and he skates with sandbags and a hockey stick. It’s not his finest hour.)

 

**iii. first gold**

If he could freeze one single moment and hold onto it forever, he thinks it would be the closing notes of the free dance at their first Olympics. They mess up the ending, sure, but when _Mahler_ ends and they’re on the ice, faces pressed together, the crowd roaring, he’s convinced he’s never been this happy in his entire life.

Okay, he may want to amend that. Knowing you’ve won the Olympics (with score confirmation and everything) feels pretty damn good too. He’s twenty two and cocky at this point in his life, a bit too convinced of his own bravado, so he shoots up from the kiss and cry like a bullet, whoops and takes at least thirty seconds before he hugs Tessa. (He still apologizes for that; she still just laughs at him for it.)

Winning the Olympics is an absolute blur, and he can’t help feel like they’re on top of the world. They’re Canada’s darlings, the world’s darlings, if they’re being honest, and it’s almost too much to take in. He finds himself clinging to her in those moments, shoulders brushing, hands finding each other under tables.

She’s his rock, always has been, and he likes to think he’s hers too. She’s there for him through the chaos, and he’s eternally grateful to have a partner to share it all with. It’s no surprise then that they end up in her room that night, trying to wrap their heads around winning the Olympics, giddy with the excitement of it all.

He looks at her then, properly, like he’s seeing her for the first time. She got older, at some point in the last few years, and grew into the gangly limbs she had as a child. Her face is flushed from the excitement, her eyes twinkling in the low light of the room. She’s looking at him, her head leaning slightly to one side, and he knows she’s trying to work out what he’s thinking. They’re creepily in synch sometimes.

He’s met with a sudden urge to kiss her. 

It shocks him at first, but then it really doesn’t, because they’ve come so close to kissing over the past few months, always holding back from crossing that last invisible line. Tonight’s not a night for holding back though, he thinks, tonight is a night for celebration.

He gets up from his perch on the side of the bed, takes two long strides toward her, takes her face in his hands, and kisses her.

Miraculously, she kisses him back. She winds her hands in his hair, slots her mouth against his. His tongue slips in her mouth, her legs wrap around his waist. They make it onto the bed together, before they’re fighting to pull each other’s clothes off.

After, when she’s wrapped in the circle of his arms, he kisses her head and thinks this was meant to be. A fairytale ending to a fairytale story, fit for Canada’s sweethearts. 

They sleep together two more times in Vancouver. Then they do press, go to Worlds, fuck in another hotel room. The off season is glorious. But they never talk about what anything means.

When they’re back in Michigan, she finds out she needs another surgery. The last time they sleep together is the night before she goes to the hospital. He’s at her bedside when she wakes up. They vow to focus on their skating.

(He still doesn’t know how they made it through the Carmen season without breaking their vow. Apparently, years of ice dance taught them more self-control and compartmentalization than is probably healthy. One thing he does remember from that year is taking lots of cold showers.)

 

**iv. first heartbreak**

Sochi breaks his heart more than any girlfriend ever could. The silver medal hangs off his neck like a leaden weight, heavy with betrayal. They put on brave faces for the cameras, for the world, for each other, for Meryl and Charlie.

After all, they still have Olympic medals. Even though they feel like they’ve been given coal.

They drink lots of vodka that night. It’s Russia, after all. 

It’s somehow so beautifully ironic that they lost to Americans in Russia while all being coached by Russians that he wants to laugh and cry at the same time. Instead, he sits cross-legged on Tessa’s bed, grabs her hand and says “I’m sorry.”

“What for?” she asks, face flushed from the alcohol but still coherent enough to talk.

“For not believing you, when it came to Marina. For being a shitty partner.”

“It’s okay, Scott.” She rubs his arm and gives him a weak smile. “It’s over now.”

He takes another swig from the bottle of Vodka, hissing as it burns his throat. He hands it to Tessa, who follows suit. When she sets it on her bedside table and lays down, staring up at the ceiling, he hears her let out a deep sigh. “How do you say, _fuck you_ , in Russian?”

“I have no idea.” He lays down next to her, shifts to his side. She does the same. They lock eyes and he can feel her breath on his throat. He tries not to think of what it feels like to kiss her, when she’s inches away, what it feels like to nibble on her earlobe, work his way down her collarbone and make her shudder at his touch.

He finds out he really doesn’t have to try not to think because she kisses him first this time, rough and passionate and almost angry, and it takes him half a second to respond. This is so different to Vancouver, he thinks, but it’s different in every other way too and maybe that’s a good thing. He tries to let his mind go blank for just a minute and revel in the feeling of Tessa pressed up close to him, and just _feel_.

After Sochi, they decide they’re done with competing. Mostly, they’re done with Marina and the ISU, but that’s an entirely different story. They haven’t fucked since that night at the Olympics. He chalks the whole event up to nerves and frustration, an aberration, nothing to worry about.

They go their separate ways — as much as their partnership allows — when they get home. 

She throws herself into her work, goes to Paris and collaborates with brands.

He gets a girlfriend, starts thinking about Winnipeg and pretends the persistent ache in his heart isn’t actually there.

 

**v. first kiss**

He likes to think he finally figured his life out in the summer of 2015. He has to concede that maybe, just maybe, China and Scotland and Kaitlyn figured it out for him. Regardless, he realizes two things that summer, ranked in order of importance. 

One: he is hopelessly, irrevocably in love with Tessa Virtue. 

Two: he wants to compete in another Olympic Games.

He decides to tackle those realizations in reverse order, the easier one first. He and Tessa have been dancing around the idea of a comeback for months, never quite making it official. But he thinks they should, after close to two years away from competition, with the itch to get out there again deep in their bones.

He makes the proposition over dinner at her house, after he’s taken a generous swig of his beer. He looks at her with bated breath, waits for her to mull it over. Tessa is the more rational one, he knows she takes more time to contemplate decisions instead of diving headfirst into a new adventure.

“I’m in.”

She says it so calmly that he almost can’t believe it happened. He raises his eyebrows as if to say _really?_ and she nods.

“We’re doing this for us,” she says matter-of-factly. “This time, it’s not about making history or defending or working against a narrative, this time it has to be about the fact that we’re not done and we love this sport.”

He just nods, amazed that she’s able to summarize all his arguments for him before he even makes them.

“I think we should call Marie-France and Patch,” is the next thing she says and he laughs out loud. 

“I was gonna suggest the same.” They’re on a roll, he thinks, and somehow, he finds himself with a bit too much courage. Part two of Scott’s grand _I’m gonna act on my realizations and get my shit together_ plan was supposed to happen far further along the road, but apparently his heart has other ideas.

“There’s something else, kiddo.”

“What?” She looks at him, eyes full of concern, and he reaches across the table to take her hand. They’ve only just fully gotten their friendship back, post-Sochi and post-Kaitlyn, and it physically hurts him to see that look on her face. He doesn’t want it there for a minute longer.

“I realized a lot of things this summer, T. I realized I want to skate again, skate with you every day because I can’t stand it when we’re apart. I need you, Tessa, and I've probably needed you forever.”

She has tears in her eyes but she’s smiling. He tries to take it as a good sign.

“You’re my best friend, and my partner.” He takes a beat. “And I’m in love with you.” He’s scrambling once the words leave his mouth, saying “you don’t have to answer that, it doesn’t have to change anything if you don’t feel the same way, but I can’t lose you…”

She stops his babbling by getting up from her seat, walking over to him, and pressing a kiss to his lips. “Shut up, I’m in love with you too.”

Kissing her feels like the first time all over again, except now, all the strings are attached and he knows deep down that this is forever, that she is his last first kiss. 

They make it to her bedroom that night, strip each other bare in more ways than one. He’s the type of sap to say they didn’t fuck that night, _they made love_ , and she’s the type who loves him enough to go along with the phrasing. 

(At some point he also remembers she’s his real first kiss — at the claw machine at the Ilderton Carnival — but he prefers this first kiss to that one, because this time, he knows it’s going to last forever.)

 

**\+ i. last question**

If falling in love with Tessa Virtue was a years-long process, he knows loving her will take a lifetime. And he’s completely sure he wants to commit to the project.

He’s had a box in his sock drawer since October 2016 — when he called his parents after Autumn Classic and asked them to send over his grandmother’s ring. His mother had cried on the phone, full of joy, his dad had just said “took you long enough” before pulling his mother in for a hug.

After Pyeongchang, after the media circus and two rounds of Stars on Ice, they’re having a blissfully normal week in Montreal. He’s getting into the swing of things in his new coaching position, she’s picked up the last classes she needs to finish her degree. They still skate together in the evenings, can’t help themselves from thinking up new programs for the next few years.

It’s so fun without the pressure, he thinks, watching her float around the ice and laugh and be silly and create. He can’t help but smile through the whole evening, doesn’t want to let go of her hand, and steals kisses every chance he gets. It feels blissfully free, just like it did over two decades ago when all they could muster were shaky laps along the sides of the rink, and maybe a cautious twirl.

Now, they can fly across the ice, play off of one another, dance with abandon and feel like they’re invincible. They’re alone at the rink that night, Marie and Patch left hours ago, but he has a key and knows how to work the speakers.

They stopped trying to put new programmes together a while ago, and she’s taken control of the music. He thinks she’s taking pity on him, since she hasn’t played Hall & Oates yet, but she’s really running through a compilation of their favourite past programs. There’s a little Mahler, some Carmen, some Hip Hip, Chin Chin. They dance to Funny Face, Umbrellas, and Latch.

It’s like travelling through time and replaying all the best parts, the times where he got to hold her in his arms and fly across the ice and they were so connected to one another it sometimes took their breaths away. He hasn’t planned for tonight to turn into a walk down memory lane, but he’s glad for it.

His box has migrated into his skate bag, the one place he knows she won’t check — _“It’s gross Scott, and it smells, and you really should consider putting some air freshener in there sometime!” —_ since they live together now and she has easy access to his sock drawer. That’s also a post-Olympics development, formally cancelling the lease on his condo and hauling all his stuff into hers.

That night turns out to be the perfect moment, and he grins before skating to the boards, pretending to need a drink of water. He slips the ring out of the box and into his pocket and rejoins her on the ice. “Can I pick the next song?”

She nods and smiles. Her cheeks are tinged pink from the cold, her hair is up in a bun and he swears she’s never looked more beautiful. _Long Time Running_ filters through the speakers, and she grins, holding out her hand to him.

They skate and skate and feel like they’re flying and it’s like no time has passed before they’re in the programme’s ending position, kneeling across from one another.

He steals a kiss, takes a deep breath and lays his soul bare.

“T—” he starts, and he thinks she might know what’s coming because she’s already tearing up. He pulls the ring from his pocket.

“I’ve loved you forever, I think, since that first day we met. It took me a while after that to find out I was _in love_ with you too, but now I know I can’t live without you. Tessa, you’re the love of my life, will you marry me?”

She chokes out a watery yes before launching herself at him, holding him so tightly he thinks he can’t breathe. When they break apart, she’s laughing and crying (still his favourite sound), and then he slips the ring on her finger and there’s kissing and he thinks this is definitely the happiest moment of his life.

They get up, holding hands, and stand on the ice, still in disbelief. It hits him then, like a tonne of bricks. He starts off toward the corner of the rink, and she follows, her hand still in his.

He kisses her cheek and squeezes her hand.

Her eyes widen, a mixture of mirth and understanding shining in them. “So you finally made it official,” she says, and grins.

(This time, he doesn’t break up with her over the phone, his buddies giving him advice over his shoulder. This time, he marries her, and vows to hold her hand every day for the rest of their lives.)


End file.
